The global financial crisis will likely hit Formula One unless its administrators start controlling costs now, team owners and officials warned on Friday.
“[The crisis] is going to affect all of us, it has come at a difficult time,” Toro Rosso owner Gerhard Berger said at practice sessions for today’s street circuit Singapore GP. “It is not going to be any easier in the next two years.”
Berger said new sponsors have become rare in F1 — the world’s most expensive sport — where teams depend heavily on global companies ranging from consumer electronics to banking and telecommunications as sponsors.
The teams spend millions of dollars in research and development as well as organization. Millions more are spent on ferrying the cars, equipment, engineers and technicians around the globe.
Formula One boss Bernie Ecclestone pointed to the stabilizing effects of long-term contracts with sponsors while conceding there could be some impact.
“I suppose like the rest of the world, it will have some side effects but what they’ll be, I don’t know,” Ecclestone said.
Williams CEO Adam Parr said there was a way to cope with the downturn.
“What’s important, as with any business, is to prepare,” Parr said. “We are trying to do that, some perhaps harder than others.”
He said teams had to identify ways to reduce costs, and work with commercial rights holders to ensure the sport continues to grow.
“In spite of the difficult environment, we are in rude good health. But we will only stay in rude good health if we prepare for the future, because the world is changing right now very, very fast,” Parr said.
However, Norbert Haug, the head of Mercedes motor sport, said companies under pressure were looking for high-impact advertising.
“Formula One can deliver,” Haug said. “It is really a good chance for everyone.”
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